The Harvard Business Review released last week a list of world’s best-performing chief executives. One statistical detail easy to overlook deserves particular attention beyond the ranking: Only 25% of the top 100 CEO’s have an MBA. So, clearly there must be something else that matters when it comes to leading for long-term performance and the triple bottom line. Already some years ago leading thinkers and education experts such as Sir Ken Robinson stated “The master of fine arts is the new master of business administration,” and supported his claim in saying “a study of the educational background of leaders in 652 engineering companies in Silicon Valley — you would expect that they had a background in science, engineering and mathematics, yet .

“The M.B.A. is a challenged brand”, Greg Pass, the former chief technology officer of Twitter and now on the faculty of Cornell Tech stated in a very recent New York Times article . As an alternative for educating future business leaders Cornell Tech has launched an innovative concept which includes cross-disciplinary project collaboration between M.B.A. candidates and computer science graduates, group problem solving and group critique methods. “The emphasis is on making things rather than planning.” Pass stated according to the article.